Increase AdSense Earnings with Competitive Ad Filter

Luke Meshios from Webmaster SEO wrote the following reader ‘quick tip’:

Do you ever wonder why it is you get low clicks sometimes? 1 cents – 10 cents?

This is because the Adsense Publishers are offering low amounts. Some times they offer a low amount because they have Adsense on their website too. And they might get 10 cents a click for every 1 cent they pay. These sites are known as “Made For Adsense” Yep, it does suck!. But there is a way around this to increase your earnings.

Go to Adsblacklist, Sign Up, put in your URL and keyword, click generate. You will then get an extensive list of 200 sites to block in your AdSense competitive ad filter.

Now go to your Adsense account, Click on Adsense Setup, Then click on competitive ad filter, copy and paste the websites you were giving from Adsblacklist . Now wait till Adsense blocks those sites.

I’ve seen this suggestion posted in a couple of different spots. What I don’t get is why people think it will work. If low-paying advertisers are showing up on your site doesn’t that mean that they are the highest bidders? And if they are the highest bidders, how can you make more money by excluding them?

At first look I thought, “Wow, this is a great service!” Marios Alexandrou raises a very good point though – if these ads are showing up on your site, doesn’t that mean they are the highest bidder, and blocking them will effectively decrease your revenue?

If there is an answer or explanation to this question, then indeed, this is a great service.

Good point Marios, I used a similar service a few months back and didn’t notice much difference………The way adsense works is……it shows the highest paying keywords available to your site….adsense does this job for you already.

You can’t really argue with results. I made this change a few weeks ago and have seen about a 40% increase in my AdSense earnings… it’s possible that it’s just a holiday thing, but so far I’m pretty impressed.

To test it out, late last night I removed all the URLs from my filter, and so far today my earnings have been abysmal.

I believe the argument is that AdSense will often show the ad with the highest CTR, not necessarily the highest CPC.

My experiments have certainly suggested that this is true. There is a side benefit in that you are providing a much better experience for your readers by removing ads that are purely MFA, or other types of spamminess… hey, I’ve coined a new phrase!

Hmm… I might have a little more faith in this idea if it were open source and not a money-making venture. It seems that the money you save will just instead go towards your subscription to the service.

Blocking competitive ads is one thing, but blocking ads for the express purpose of raising revenues might be seen as gaming the system. I am not saying that people don’t game the system all to hell, but this one might be obvious enough to draw unwanted attention.

It seems to me that Google is going to see a lot of advertisers adding these blocks to their sites and begin to wonder what is going on. I would hate to see Adsense users banned for this behavior, but again, the commercial nature of the venture makes me a little leery.

If you are getting tons of low-paying clicks, the best advice is to lower the amount of ads showing. Its counter intuitive, but very effective. I went from having 3 ad units showings, to just one leaderboard and my earnings are way up. You may lose a few clicks, but your existing clicks will go from $0.03 to $0.50, which is a big jump.

I am not entirely sure whether filtering these advertisers has increased my pay-per-click, since Google’s latest Adwords Algorithm had already increased my pay-per-click before I saw this post. What I can say is that I LOVE getting rid of these low-quality sites and was excited to find somebody had gone to the effort of tracking them down.

I am less worried about the pay-per-click than the experience of the users who click on the ads. Every person who clicks on an ad and finds junk is less likely to click again and more likely to resent my site. I am happy to be rid of these junk dealers no matter what they were paying. I just wish I had more than 200 filter terms alloted because I would like to filter out a lot more of these lousy advertisers.

I did this, added in 200 to the filter and I’m freaking out right now. I went from making around $15-$20 a day to $40-$50 a day. In the 9 days of Dec. so far, I’m past what I usually make in an entire month. I’ve been jumping up and down all week. Is it a fluke? The holiday season? I have no idea but I pray to God it continues because I may actually be able to afford to get a car and pay some bills. Oh yea!

I’m starting to become skeptical of this. I just tried it and my earnings have dropped to half of what I usually get. I think the people who are listing their “gains” experience those because of the holiday season. On all my blogs during the holiday season, my earnings go out of the roof. But right now I’m trying this in the spring and it looks like my adsense is doing worse.